Tuesday, April 30, 2013

"Crop land in Iowa tops $11,500 an acre; bubble ready to burst?"

This is from the Des Moines Register and is the third or fourth article this year where they've used the words farmland and bubble in the same story.
High quality crop land in Iowa is worth $11,515 an acre, up 9.4 percent from September 2012, according to land realtors throughout the state.

The Realtors Land Institute, whose members specialize in farm and land sales, management and appraisal, said the most expensive land was in the northwest part of the state at $13,387 per acre, an increase of 9.2 percent from six months earlier. In the south central part of the state, land averaged $8,480, the lowest in Iowa, but still up 11.1 percent.

All participants in the survey were asked to estimate average values of farmland as of March 2013.
High prices for corn, soybeans, wheat and other commodities have left growers flush with cash to purchase more land. And what the farmers don’t pay for out of their own pockets, historically low interest rates provide them with easy and cheap access to money to close the deal....
In March it was "Farmland values keep going up"
And in January we see "Farmland investors talk of possible Iowa bubble".
(Register via Ag.com)

The register is pretty clued in to the talk on the ground.